Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/364

344 afterwards when in exile made twenty moral and amorous canzonets very ex- cellent, and amongst other things three noble epistles: one he sent to the Flor- entine government, complaining of his undeserved exile; another to the Em- peror Henry when he was at the siege of Brescia, reprehending him for his delay, and almost prophesying; the third to the Italian cardinals during the vacancy after the death of Pope Clem- ent, urging them to agree in ejecting an Italian Pope; all in Latin, with noble precepts and excellent senten- ces and authorities, which were much commended by the wise and learned. And he wrote the Commedia, where, in polished verse and with great and sub- tile arguments, moral, natural, astro- logical, philosophical, and theological, with new and beautiful figures, similes, and poetical graces, he composed and treated in a hundred chapters or cantos of the existence of hell, purgatory, and paradise; so loftily as may be said of it, that whoever is of subtile intellect may by his said treatise perceive and understand. He was well pleased in this poem to blame and cry out, in the manner of poets, in some places per- haps more than he ought to have done; but it may be that his exile made him do so. He also wrote the Monarchia, where he treats of the office of popes and emperors. And he began a com- ment on fourteen of the above-named moral canzonets in the vulgar tongue, which in consequence of his death is found imperfect except on three, which to judge from what is seen would have proved a lofty, beautiful, subtile, and most important work; because it is equally ornamented with noble opin- ions and fine philosophical and astro- logical reasoning. Besides these he composed a little book which he en- titled De Vulgari Eloqueritia, of which he promised to make four books, but only two are to be found, perhaps in consequence of his early death; where, in powerful and elegant Latin and good reasoning, he rejects all the vulgar tongues of Italy. This Dante, from his knowledge, was somewhat presump- tuous, harsh, and disdainful, like an ungracious philosopher ; he scarcely deigned to converse with laymen; but for his other virtues, science, and worth as a citizen, it seems but reasonable to give him perpetual remembrance in this our chronicle; nevertheless, his noble works, left to us in writing, bear true testimony of him, and honorable fame to our city.

LETTER OF FRATE ILARIO. Arrivabene, Comento Storico, p. 379. .....Hither he came, passing through other feeling. And seeing him, as yet the diocese of Luni, moved either by unknown to me and to all my brethren, the religion of the place, or by some I questioned him of his wishings and